Burning
by OPYKJ
Summary: Being experimented on might have lingering effects after all. An addition to the Scientific Method episode.
1. Chapter 1 - The Tortoise and the Hare

**Chapter 1 – The Tortoise and the Hare**

The cool air of the sickbay was a welcome relief from the stifling heat in the corridor. Holding his uniform jacket over his shoulder, Chakotay leaned against the wall, his arrival unnoticed by the person he'd come to see.

Kathryn Janeway was perched on a biobed, her back to him and straight as a rod. He knew her well enough to recognise all the signs of stress in the taut shoulders and rigid neck. He should have checked on her much earlier.

Echoing Chakotay's thoughts, the EMH grumbled while administering a hypospray to his patient. "You shouldn't have waited so long before seeing me, Captain. It's a bad habit of yours to always be the last one to come to sickbay to be treated."

"I've been busy, Doctor," she said. A deep sigh escaped her as the medication took effect. She dipped her head backwards, her ponytail brushing her shoulders. Chakotay could empathise with the visible relief she was showing.

"I've reversed the genetic tag that produced too much dopamine in your body," the EMH continued." The dangerous amounts you've been subjected to for the past few days should decline naturally by tomorrow morning."

He frowned as Janeway jumped off the biobed. "Excuse me, Captain. I haven't finished. I can't reduce those levels any quicker in case you develop withdrawal symptoms in the weeks to come. This means that you might still experience—"

Janeway's voice dropped one octave. "Thank you, Doctor, but I've got a ship to take care of."

"I would much prefer that—"

"Captain, it's good to see you," Chakotay said as he approached the warring pair.

Janeway whirled around. "Chakotay," she uttered, smiling. "How are you feel– "

Their eyes met, then he saw her gaze leave his face and glide down to his chest. She licked her lips, swallowed, glanced back up.

"The Doctor has done his miracles on me too," he said with a chuckle. "I'm back to my normal self, young and good looking again."

He waited for her to greet him with a reassuring hand on his arm and tell him how glad she was to see him. He would joke about his newly regrown hair, and her frown would waver, saying 'I missed you' and 'don't do that to me again'.

Instead, her smile faded. Then, she strode past him, staring straight ahead. He hurried in her wake.

"Captain?" Despite his longer stride, Chakotay found he had to break into a brisk trot to catch up with her.

"I strongly recommend you both take some well-deserved time off-duty," the EMH said in a loud voice to their backs, before the closing door silenced his protest.

"The Doctor is right, you should be getting some rest." She threw the words over her shoulder without slowing down.

"I've been resting long enough for the past few days," he said, thinking he could have done with another day of leave. The Doctor had reassured him his DNA was back to normal after the experience that had seen him thrust into old age in a matter of hours. Yet, it was as if his body remained unsure what biological age it'd been reset to. Even now, he needed to think about every movement carefully lest something hurt or did not quite work as it should. The heat was also making him sluggish.

Janeway stopped in front of a Jefferies tube hatch. "Where are you going?" he added, confused.

"Engineering is too short-staffed to check all the reported breaches. The turbolifts are offline from here down, so I'll go the long way, starting with Deck 12. I'll see you on the bridge." She opened the hatch then slid into the tube without looking back.

He contemplated the open door for a few seconds, then took a toolbox from a storage alcove in the corridor. Putting his superfluous uniform jacket in its place, he followed Janeway through the access door and into the endless low passage, trying in vain to ignore his aches.

"I really don't need your help, Chakotay," she said over her shoulder.

Before he had time to argue, he saw her recoil from the wall. "Ouch," he heard.

"Captain?"

"The plasma conduit. It's hot."

"Let me have a look at your arm," he volunteered, hobbling on his knees towards her. The toolbox banged against the side of his chest, and he hitched it up a little higher.

"I'm fine, Chakotay. I can't dawdle." Janeway glided a few more metres towards the junction ahead, then hopped onto the ladder leading to the lower decks.

Chakotay blinked the sweat away before seizing the nearest rung and starting his descent slowly.

When his hair had fallen out, he had felt pure dread. He didn't think he was vain and that enamoured with his appearance, but what he had seen looking back at him in the mirror – the wrinkled and tired face, the trembling knobbly hands reaching to his scalp – had shaken him. What had hurt most, more than the fuzzy vision and sore joints, had been the feeling he had hardly lived his life, that there was so much more he needed to do. That belief kept nagging at him as he stepped off the ladder and crawled through more Jefferies tubes following a sullen captain for what seemed to be hours.

Another set of vertical steps, another slow descent. "One more deck and I should be able to access the environmental controls section," Janeway said from beneath him, her voice breaking through the cloud of his mind.

She stepped aside when he landed on the small platform, breathing heavily. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Just feeling a bit stiff." Exhausted was closer to the truth, but he smiled to himself. Either it was the exercise or the heat, but Kathryn was talking to him again. Despite his best efforts, he still had no idea why she'd been pushing him away for most of the afternoon. After another rebuff, he had put down her surliness to the stress of the past few days. The crew, and their captain, had been through a lot and she was allowed to feel short-tempered.

Janeway was already jumping on the next ladder. "Let's go then. We're almost there."

He breathed a sigh of relief, then leaned over and grasped her shoulder. "Don't you think it's getting hotter?" he said, letting her go when she flinched at the contact.

She whipped the tricorder off her belt and waved it at the walls, while slowly descending. "The temperature beyond these bulkheads is rising fast," she noted before scrambling back up again, her tone anxious.

"If there is a fire on Deck 12 and it spreads to the areas immediately above and below, we can say goodbye to navigation and Main Engineering," Chakotay said.

"Not to mention warp engine controls," she noted. "We do need to put more distance between us and the pulsars."

She tapped her comm badge. "Janeway to Engineering."

~Torres here.~

"The Commander and I are in Jefferies tube 24A. We suspect there's a fire on Deck 12. We'll determine its size and report back. Monitor the temperatures of the adjacent decks just in case."

~A fire will mean we won't have access to the turbolifts or be able to restore normal environmental conditions for another day at least.~

"The Jefferies tubes exist for a reason, Torres, and the crew can survive the heat a bit longer," Janeway snapped back.

~Yes, Ma'am,~ came the curt response.

Chakotay had heard from Voyager's scuttlebutt how B'Elanna had been at the end of Janeway's sharp tongue in previous days. The Chief Engineer obviously had no wish to remain a target of the tetchy captain.

"I'll let you know when you can activate the extraction fans. Janeway out."

She hit her comm badge with more force than necessary. "The internal sensors must be offline for Engineering not to have picked up the rising temperatures earlier. A fire is the last thing we need right now."

"B'Elanna is right though," Chakotay said in a neutral tone. "The heat and the lack of turbolifts are not making things easier for the crew. They're yet to fully recover from what the Srivani did to them."

"I know." Janeway rubbed her forehead. "I was a bit abrupt, wasn't I?"

"You've got every right to be after what you had to endure for days on end. What the Srivani inflicted on you was pure agony," Chakotay said.

She hesitated. "I'll understand if you'd prefer to go back to the bridge rather than follow me. I haven't been the best person to be around lately."

"And I am sorry I could not be there with you, but now that I am here, you won't get rid of me that easily." Lifting the heavy box with extra care on his shoulder, he couldn't avoid a wince at the lingering pain wedged in the small of his back.

A worried frown appeared on her face. "You should have listened to the Doctor," she said.

Chakotay chuckled. "Nothing better than a bit of exercise to loosen up the joints, but we better get going or I might freeze in mid-movement."

"Freezing would make a pleasant change, but you need to let me know when you've had enough," she said.

It was clear she was pushing him away without making it an order. Maybe she did need some time alone to deal with her memories of the past few days. He was not ready to talk about what he had endured either.

Then he noticed the deep lines around her mouth, the listless hair. What worried him even more were her eyes darting left and right, never staying on him for long. If he was the slow tortoise bound to the gravity of old age, she was the spring hare, bouncing unceasingly against the walls of her drug-impacted mind. He could not abandon her in her current state of heightened restlessness.

"I'll be fine, Captain. Show the way."

Looking uncertain, she nodded, then turned away and stepped down the ladder. He followed once more, heavy with fatigue.

Reaching the bottom of the well, Janeway stood in front of a side passageway and flicked out a tricorder from her belt. "The temperature is seventy degrees down this section, aft wall. Too low to be a fire. The internal sensors must have tripped, and the environmental controls have gone in overdrive. Pass me a transmitter and I'll affix it here."

Chakotay foraged in the bag and handed her the small device. She stuck it on the wall and pressed a couple of buttons. "Two more of those on this deck, and B'Elanna will have a good idea of the size of the affected area."

Shuffling along another length of Jefferies tube, he almost rammed the derrière of his captain who had stopped abruptly at the end of the passageway. He gratefully put the toolbox down and sat down, his back against the wall. He had to fight the temptation to close his eyes, lest he nodded off on the spot.

"I should never have ordered Voyager to fly through the pulsars. I wasn't thinking straight," Janeway said, entering a couple of digits in the pad near the hatch.

The change of topic took him by surprise. Harry had told him about Janeway's mad plan and Tuvok's remonstration at her recklessness. Chakotay didn't know if he would even have tried to stop her when she had given the order that had freed the ship from the medical experimenters-cum-torturers.

"You had no choice. You had to do something." He wondered if Janeway's off behaviour since the aliens had left the ship was entirely due to the dopamine. She was prone to overdo the guilt trip at the best of times and today she was jumping out of her skin.

"That's what I keep telling myself. And you know what, Chakotay? I don't sound too convincing."

"They'd killed Ensign Luke right in front of you. Sooner or later, they would have collected enough data according to their sickening criteria and terminated their experiment. And all of us with it." He stifled a yawn.

He still regretted that he'd been too slow to recognise that her brusque behaviour on the bridge earlier in the week had been out of character. The rapid ageing he had been subjected to had not caused his brain to go to mush, and he should have known then she wasn't herself. Working closely together, they might have discovered the Srivani's activities much sooner and avoided the tortures the crew had faced.

Janeway punched the door code again but the hatch did not budge. "It felt like the most natural thing to threaten to crash the ship, instead of trying to make the Srivani see reason."

Shaking her head, she took the manual release from its niche and slammed it against the door. "Tuvok was right. I made a rash decision. It was completely unprofessional to let my emotions take over," she countered.

"It's difficult to ignore what our altered minds and bodies have been telling us for what could be weeks. We have no way of knowing how long the Srivani had been experimenting on us."

He straightened up his back. His own body was certainly clamouring for him to slow down.

Hands braced on the manual handles, Janeway turned her head sharply at his words, bearing an expression he couldn't read. If he didn't know her better, he thought she looked … _hungry_.

She took a deep breath and yanked the door open. A wave of scorching air crashed over them, parching their skin and throats instantly. Coughing, Chakotay pushed against the heat and helped Janeway close the hatch tight. He collapsed beside her, gasping for air.

 **###**

In a daze, she unfastened the front of her constrictive jacket. The under-shirt was sticking to her dank skin, beads of sweat careering between her breasts and down her back.

"Let me help you," Chakotay said.

She could smell the sweat glistening on his arms, feel the heat emanating from him even in the stifling warmth of the Jefferies tube. This close, there were new wrinkles in the corners of his dark eyes she'd never seen before. A tinge of silver shone in his black hair in the dim lighting, and she wondered what it would feel to thread her fingers through his short-cropped hair.

When she'd seen Chakotay last, he'd been a husk, a man aged beyond his time, his skin blotched, his movements cautious and stiff.

Now, in the confines of the tight space, he was pure magnetism with his strong arms and wide chest straining against the close-fitting shirt. The man had been overwhelming her senses since he had appeared in sickbay, nonchalantly holding his jacket over the shoulder. How he could not know what he was doing to her was beyond comprehension.

She felt a sharp sting as he helped her out of the sleeves. For a half a second, she forgot his body so close to hers as he delicately nudged the fabric off the small injury.

"Sorry, Captain. It's not deep, but you'd better let the Doctor look at that burn," he said, bending over.

"Do that again," she grunted. She watched his lips open and licked her own in response.

"That?" he asked, a frown showing as he prodded her arm more forcefully.

"Yes," she said.

"Why?"

 _Why. Why? Can't you see I'm a quivering mess?_

"Are you all right?" His eyes were dark, searing through her.

"Yes."

 _No._

"I can't handle this much longer," she muttered, tearing herself away. "Commander," she said aloud, "go and see if B'Elanna needs some help. I'll check the temperature on the other side of this section."

 _How long had the Doctor said? Tomorrow morning?_ She would never last that long. She was burning here.

"You are not going anywhere without me." Chakotay settled back against the opposite wall, his long legs blocking the corridor, then blinked a few times.

She gave up melting into the bulkhead behind her. "It's an order, Commander," she said in a last-ditch effort. Her voice didn't sound like her usual commanding tone. It was downright pleading to her ears.

"Tell me what's wrong, Kathryn," Chakotay said. "Talk to me." He closed his eyes.

 _Damn, Chakotay. We haven't done anything else than talk for the past four years. I need more. Now._

She drew near him. Her lips grazed his and his eyes flashed open. There was surprise in their depths, but not the protest she'd been dreading. A smile came to him and he leaned his head back while closing his eyes once more, lips slightly open and his breathing deep and even.

Janeway felt the last fragments of her self-control vanish, replaced by the irrepressible allure of desire and pleasure at his relaxed pose welcoming her. Needing to feel him against her, she kneeled between his legs sprawled on the deck grates, and placed his heavy strong hands on her shoulders, their touch surprisingly cool against her skin. His fingers trailed down her breasts leaving shudders in their wake like the footprints of sparrows in the spring snow.

Watching Chakotay's body surrendering to her, she forgot the heat and the damaged ship. He was giving himself to her. He was hers, completely hers.

She dived in.

 **###**

 _Of all the things you've done, Janeway, this one does take the cake._

"How is he?" she asked, her face in the shadows.

Slight snores were rising from the prone man lying on the biobed. The silver streaks in his hair were almost gone, and she found herself missing them. They spoke of maturity, of overcoming the challenges brought by a long and eventful life, of hard-earned wisdom. She should have heeded their silent words instead of falling head over heels into the temptation of instant gratification.

"He is sleeping, Captain," the EMH said.

"Is there really nothing the matter with him? I could not arouse him."

She forced herself not to groan at the slip-up. By the time she'd hitched his shirt up and undone his belt, the man had been fast asleep. Unable to get more than a few lethargic grunts out of him, she had pushed his shirt back down and fastened his trousers before asking for a site-to-site transport to sickbay. Her mind in turmoil, she had spent the next few hours securing the area they had been investigating and helping Engineering with the long list of repairs.

Back in sickbay, she wasn't sure if she should laugh at the whole situation, or cry.

"If I had known the Commander was going to roam the ship for hours, I would have insisted that he stayed in his quarters for at least another shift."

The EMH's words stung. She'd been completely oblivious to Chakotay's exhaustion and then had seen fit to throw herself at him. She had failed him as his captain and as his friend. What she'd done was unforgivable.

"What should I do?" she whispered, knowing full well where her duty lay.

"Letting the Commander sleep is the best medicine to help him recuperate," the EMH responded.

He waved his medical wand at her. "In your case, the physical exercise must have hastened the metabolization of the excess dopamine. I am pleased to say that its levels are back to normal."

No amount of medical explanation was going to help or lessen the impact of her appalling behaviour. Officers had been justifiably kicked out of Starfleet for less.

"And the rest of the crew?" she asked, her hand to her brow.

The EMH smiled. "Between my diligent ministrations and the restoration of the environmental controls, all have recovered and are functioning within normal parameters, as Seven would say."

Her fingers dropped to the side of the bed. _Parameters. Four years of using parameters to keep him away, and now…_

To start with, no more flirting, soft touches, candle-lit dinners. She would have to tell him to forget about her birthday coming up in less than a month. At their last dinner together, he had hinted he was researching the history of nineteenth-century old Earth sailing ships for a present.

Well, there would be no birthday celebrations this year. Or for the next seventy years of the journey.

~Torres to Janeway.~

"Janeway here."

~Temperatures across Deck 12 are down to 35 degrees Celsius, Captain. I am heading there to get the turbolifts back online.~

Janeway bit her lips. What had she told her and Tom? Thrown at them rather? _Adolescent behaviour. Using better judgement. Maintain the standard for the crew._

"B'Elanna…"

~Yes, Captain?~ came the cautious voice.

"I'll take care of the turbolifts. You've worked miracles today. Take the rest of the shift off."

The Chief Engineer's beaming smile could just about be heard over the comm badge. ~Thank you, Captain. Torres out.~

 _Tuvok saw right through me when he asked if he should flog them as well. I should be the one getting flogged. Wouldn't be difficult to disengage the holodeck safety protocols and purge myself of—_

"Captain!"

"Sorry, Doctor. What did you say?"

"How long since you've slept? A full night, not the three hours you had before you came and saw me this morning."

 _Sleep?_

"I can't. Too much to do."

The turbolifts first, then she needed to record her logs, starting with her decision to throw the ship into the twin pulsars. Write Ensign Luke's obituary. Ask Neelix about the best route ahead through the vast territory spread at the edge of Voyager's astrometrics charts.

That should keep her busy for a while. She needed to be busy.

Until Chakotay wakes up and she would have to face his disgust – or worse – his pity.


	2. Chapter 2- The Finishing Line

**Chapter 2—Finishing Line**

He woke up … refreshed. More than refreshed. New. That's the only word he could think of as he swung his legs over the side of the biobed. It was marvellous to feel no painful joints, no complaining muscles. His eyesight was even sharper than the day before. Old age was not for him yet.

"Commander, it is good to see you awake at last."

"Thank you, Doctor." He looked around. "Why am I here? Did I have a relapse?"

"Not at all. You just needed another good night sleep to fully recover, like most people on this ship. You are free to go back to your quarters."

Chakotay stood up, then frowned at the state of his uniform. His pants were grey with grime with threadbare patches at the knees, and he stunk. On his way back to the turbolift, he retrieved his jacket from the tool alcove. A few minutes later, he was entering his personal code in the door pad when a dishevelled head popped out from the captain's quarters.

"Commander."

"Captain. How are you? I assume I have you to thank for getting me to sickbay. I am sorry to have fallen asleep right when things were getting a bit intense." He pulled on his earlobe. "I hope I didn't miss any—"

"I need to talk to you."

"Could it wait? I do need a shower," he said, wrinkling his nose. "Unless it's urgent," he added when he saw Janeway frown.

She nodded curtly. "In private."

"Why don't you come in, then? We can have breakfast together."

He entered his quarters. "Order whatever you want," he said over his shoulder. He took his shirt off and pushed it into the recycler with the jacket. "I'll have my usual—hot porridge with honey. Won't be long."

He threw a smile at Janeway who was standing in the doorway, arms clasped on her chest. For the first time in days, life was looking good.

 **###**

"Listen to me, Chakotay. Whether you remember or not is a moot point. It actually makes it worse if you did. Somehow."

Her coffee cup was untouched, and she had avoided all eye contact since sitting down at the breakfast table. The woman was worried sick about what she'd done to him.

He did remember a kiss as light as a feather, her breath like the breeze on a spring day, his fingers touching her searing skin, her nipples hard against the sweat-drenched shirt. After that, a blank. Alone with the love of his life giving herself to him at long last, or so he could gather from her more than vague description of the event, and then…nothing. Not even a dream, or the figments of one.

However, it was clear she was beating herself up about what was supposed to have happened. Whatever the 'what' was exactly. Given he'd been so close to comatose that even a red alert would not have stirred him back to life, Kathryn was quite correct, maybe he didn't need to know what he'd missed. He couldn't help wondering though, as shameless curiosity battled with his concern for her.

"I've asked Tuvok to convene a disciplinary hearing as soon as possible which I would like you to attend. I'll plead guilty to whatever protocols he'll deem I've breached, and I'll also write an official apology to you. I just wanted to say sorry to you first."

"You are acting as judge and jury," he noted, keeping his voice neutral.

She contemplated the depth of her cup. "What I did amounts to committing sexual assault on a member of my crew, and sexual assault is a punishable offence under Starfleet regulations. Tuvok will be in the best position to assess my flagrant disregard of regulations. It is not the first time he has had to do that to me," she said, pursing her lips.

"And five minutes later, everybody on the ship will know the how, when and what."

"Tuvok will never—"

"Don't you think that Tom will become suspicious if Tuvok takes your coffee replicator rations off for a month? But you are right. I was being flippant when I said five minutes. I'll give him half a day to figure it all out."

"I am sorry. Again," she said with a self-deprecating smirk. "I hadn't thought about what it would mean for your reputation." She massaged her temples, squinting.

She was exhausted and an exhausted Janeway, he had learnt over the years, just went on piling more on her shoulders until she would either chew his head off or allow him to share some of the strain. Sadly, the latter was not going to eventuate soon, but he had to try.

"I can settle any smart remarks coming my way, Captain." _Although you might not approve my methods._ "You came here to make an apology and I really appreciate the gesture, but you are blowing the whole situation out of proportion. Asking a Vulcan for his opinion on human mating behaviour is going a bit far in my opinion."

Her face went from pale to pink. "It was not—"

~Commander Tuvok to Captain Janeway. Where would you like to meet?~

Chakotay tapped his comm badge bemoaning the Vulcan's timing. "The Captain and I will meet you in my office."

~Understood. Tuvok out.~

Chakotay got up. "Captain? Let's stroll to Deck 2."

 **###**

"And when you were in sickbay, did you inquire about the side effects of dopamine imbalance?" Tuvok asked, the tip of his long fingers touching each other as in prayer.

"I can't use the dopamine as an excuse. I knew what I was doing."

Tuvok's index fingers did a tap-tap thing.

Janeway sighed heavily and gazed at the ceiling before remembering Tuvok was not sensitive to such childish behaviours. "Taking risks, alertness, high energy, insomnia, anxiety."

She saw Chakotay winced at the litany. It did sound awful. It had been awful. But it was not like she'd never experienced those emotional states before, if not perhaps with such intensity and for days on end. She suppressed a yawn. The insomnia was certainly ebbing off now.

"Anything else?"

"Aggressivity," she added, her shoulders dropping. Tuvok had been less than impressed, and rightly so, when she had griped about the lack of self-control exhibited by the crew. She needed to apologise to him. Again. She'd really made a mess of things.

Tuvok was looking at her. "Any other symptoms of dopamine overdose you might have experienced?"

She stared into her cold cup of coffee, hands tightly wound around it.

"Hedonism," she mumbled.

"I am sorry, Captain, what did you say?"

Her cheeks heated up. "Hedonism."

Tuvok lifted an eyebrow. "A school of thought developed by ancient Greek philosophers that argues that pleasure and happiness are the primary aims of human life. A very peculiar philosophy, from a Vulcan perspective."

Her jaw tightened.

"Your enjoyment of coffee does lend credit to this interpretation. However, given the reason for this meeting, I assume you are referring to sensual self-indulgence of another kind," Tuvok added.

"Yes," she spat out, glancing up. She wondered for a few heartbeats if Tuvok's composed face was not just an act. That was not possible. Not a Vulcan. Chakotay's barely hidden leer, on the other hand... She wished her hand was holding a phaser instead of a coffee cup.

"It was quite fortunate that it was me you threw yourself at, rather than a hapless crew member," said Chakotay. "Very fortunate."

"I didn't throw myself—." She crossed her arms, unwilling to take the bait. Chakotay was fishing for more information and she was not going to give him the pleasure… "It could have been anybody," she groaned.

Chakotay's eyebrows did a little dance. The man was insufferable.

Tuvok cleared his throat. "Commander, do you want to make a formal complaint against the Captain?"

Chakotay slowly shook his head, an impudent smile on his face. "No. From my point of view, nothing took place. Unless the captain details what she did. She's been rather evasive so far."

Janeway stood up, hands on the table. "It doesn't matter whether the Commander presses charges or not. The fact that he doesn't have any recollection of the event cannot have any bearing on disciplinary actions against me. Otherwise, we can as well—"

"Captain." Tuvok's voice cut through the small room. "May I remind you that I head this hearing and that I will be the one to make the final decision."

Feeling properly chastised, Janeway sat back down.

"The Commander is quite within his right to refuse," Tuvok said. "In addition, there are mitigating circumstances against pursuing the matter any further. The elevated levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine you were subjected to were directly responsible for the very uncharacteristic behaviours you've exhibited over the past few days. It is my opinion that you have no case to answer and we are wasting time exploring unsound arguments."

Janeway opened her mouth to protest.

"The charges are dismissed, Captain."

Tuvok held her gaze for a couple of seconds. He was ordering her to back down, to let go. She released a breath she'd been holding for the past twenty-four hours. The nightmare she'd been living was behind her at last. Heavy with fatigue, she slumped a little on her chair.

"There's still that minor matter of what exactly happened in that Jefferies tube," Chakotay said. His grin widening. His chair creaked as he pushed himself against the back, hands crossed behind his head.

She would have expected such a juvenile behaviour from Tom, not from her first officer who had manifestly regressed to a time well before adulthood. The EMH must have overshot the age-reversal treatment by a mile.

"Tuvok, tell Chakotay that he said himself that nothing happened."

"If nothing happened, you would not have called —."

Tuvok interrupted. "I see your point, Commander. As you noted before, the Captain's interest in you might not have been entirely due to the excess dopamine."

He crossed his hands in front of him, his face a model of Vulcan thoughtfulness. "The Captain was kind enough to bring Starfleet fraternisation regulations to my attention not so long ago. To help maintain the very same protocols, I recommend that a senior officer be present at all times when you are both in the same room, from now on."

Chakotay scrambled to sit up. "That's absurd, Tuvok. How are we going to work together for the rest of the journey if somebody shadows us all the time?"

"I agree with Chakotay," Janeway stammered. "Your suggestion is ludicrous."

Tuvok rose from his seat and dipped his head at them both with what Janeway thought was an expression poised between annoyance and relief. She was not sure.

"That is excellent news. I am relieved that you do remember you are the command team after all, and therefore quite capable of dealing with this matter without me. I was getting concerned I might need to come up with more ridiculous recommendations."

No doubt in her mind—her Chief of Security was now exuding sarcasm as only a Vulcan fully versed in the foibles of humans could.

"I will now return to my duties. Captain. Commander."

The door closed behind him, leaving the two humans sheepishly looking at each other.

"This is not the Tuvok I recall listing my many failings in front of the review board," Janeway said with a sigh.

Chakotay chuckled. "He's got a point though. We should really talk about what you did."

"But nothing…" She rubbed her forehead. She would gladly give away her coffee rations for a week to crawl back in her quarters and into her bed right now. "The alpha shift has already started. I really ought to go to the bridge."

"Ten minutes, that's all I ask for," Chakotay said, "or do you me to call Tuvok back and ask him to chaperone us until we reach Earth?" he added with a dimple showing.

Without waiting for an answer, he moved to the small couch set against the wall. "We were in the Jefferies tube and we'd just managed to close the hatch."

He sat at one side of the couch and patted the cushion in the middle. "This is the hatch". Crossing his legs at the ankles, he looked expectantly at her.

"What are you doing, Chakotay?"

He pointed to the other side of the couch. "You were sitting there." When she did not move, he added, "If you prefer the floor, that's fine by me, but it is not very comfortable."

The man was going to make the next seventy years of their journey a living hell, she thought.

"All right, all right." She came over and sat down, keeping the cushion between her and her smiling first officer. "It was hot. I took my jacket off."

The couch was much more inviting than the Jefferies tube, she had to admit. Lifting her legs under her, she leaned against the back of the couch. The ship was humming in the background. The temperature was a welcome respite compared to the day before, and the air carried a familiar scent that never failed to make her feel safe. The tension in her body and mind loosened and fell away.

 **###**

She was facing him, eyes closed. The black shadows above the sharp angles of her cheekbones were still there, the signs of a mad week with no respite, but the worry lines of her brow were starting to fade.

Leaning across her, Chakotay gently lifted her head and placed the cushion beneath the curve of her neck. She snuggled against it with a deep sigh, making him smile. His little ruse to lure her to the couch had worked. If he had told her to get some rest, she would have jumped back into the captain's chair for the rest of the day.

He watched her sleep. His duty was to the ship and its captain, but his life was his only to live. What he needed most, more than good looks and a youthful body, were long years spent at Kathryn's side. And if luck allowed it, he would love for them to grow old together, with grey hair and laugh lines in the corners of their eyes.

Before leaving for the bridge, he lowered the illumination in his office. Today, life was indeed looking good, he decided while walking down the corridor towards the turbolift.


End file.
